Preston Scott Cohen Inc. Revolving

Two of the most remarkable sources of architectural imagi- nation in Detroit are Augustus B. Woodward’s plan, drafted in response to the 1805 fire that destroyed virtually the entire city, and the Theatre, now repurposed as a parking garage in a sublime testament to the postwar economic and architectural decline of the city. The Woodward Plan, which was only partially realized, proposed a baroque-style system of streets radiating from a series of circular parks centered in hexagonal blocks, with rectangular plazas forming the ver- tices. The Michigan Theatre, a 4,000-seat Italianate concert hall, designed in 1926 by Cornelius and George Rapp inside their Michigan Building, was to have been replaced with a garage in the 1970s, but the theater could not be demolished because it was structurally integrated with, and thus insepa- rable from the office block. Parking decks were then brutally installed inside the ornate auditorium and the lobbies, creat- ing one of the most extreme expressions of crisis in American architecture. These projects, emblematic of the city’s rise and fall, are both syntheses of conflicting systems of urban and architectural organization: the Woodward Plan, which is si- multaneously centralized and nonhierarchically repetitive, and the Michigan Theatre, a processional, theatrical space overridden by a grid. Sited between the US Postal Service Sorting Facility and Design team: Preston Scott Cohen, the , Revolving Detroit represents a unique con- Carl Dworkin. Model: Carl Dworkin , vergence of concepts inherent to these two precedents. The Mark Eichler. Model assistants: David Pilz, Michael Piscitello. idea is to introduce a great passage to the water through a he- lically ascending courtyard in the middle of a garage struc- Additional support provided by the ture that will transform, over time, into a building of great Harvard Graduate School of Design. importance to the city; it is the very inverse of decline. Preston Scott Cohen Inc. of Cambridge, Coincidental to, and thereby inhabiting the center of, one MA, is recognized for the design of of the Woodward Plan circles, the postal building cuts off the exceptional houses, urban spaces, city from the river. Revolving Detroit proposes to revive and and cultural and educational institu­ tions around the world, including the reinvent this unrealized and occupied circle of Woodward’s Sarmiento Performing Arts Center plan by displacing it toward the river. Trumbull Avenue is in Bogota, the University of Michigan extended directly through the postal building and continues Taubman Wing, the Taiyuan Museum of Art, the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, and the on through an opening in an undulating roof surface that de- Goldman Sachs Canopy in New York. fines the new circle. This new passage serves as a monumental

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PSC_Log37.indd 2-3 4/7/16 7:42 PM Section. Previous spread: Model detail. portal to the river and, implicitly, as a symbolic gateway to building that rises out of the roof surface defines both the be- Site plan showing speculative expan­ the border between the and Canada. ginning and the end of the loop. The entire surface appears as sion of Woodward Plan grid. Next spread: Diagrams illustrating deriva­ In essence, the proposed structure is a void, the absence of a coherent geometrical figure being manipulated and torqued tion of roof geometry. All images cour­ a building. But unlike the thousands of unintended absences by its context, and thus represents a new relationship between tesy Preston Scott Cohen Inc. elsewhere in the city, this void is a purposeful consequence, what are usually autonomous urban and architectural figures. filled with eventful spiraling ramps that geometrically trans- Revolving Detroit welcomes back the automobile and in- form from orthogonal to hexagonal to elliptical and back again. vites visitors to the redeveloping city waterfront. The process The Trumbull Avenue promenade leads to a landing below the that infamously transformed an iconic theater into a parking undulating roof and proceeds to bypass a courtyard via a pair garage – a poetic manifestation of Detroit’s relationship with of ramps, culminating at a lower landing that coincides with the automotive industry – is reversed. As the city rejuve- the top surface of the roof. nates, the parking decks installed in the upper hyperboloidal The roof is composed of convergent and nonconvergent spaces of Revolving Detroit will be redeveloped as a series of segments of hyperboloids of revolution. These hyperboloids performance spaces, cinemas, educational facilities, athletic extend to nearly catenary curves, producing a series of thin- spaces, and community centers. In direct conceptual and for- shell structural arches. The generators of each hyperboloid mal contrast to their up-river counterpoints (the private and coincide with the neighboring hyperboloids, constituting a introverted cylinders that form the ), the piecewise method for generating absolute surface continuity. geometry of this project acts as an instrument for producing By their mathematical nature, hyperboloids twist until they connections between otherwise disassociated public spaces. turn back on themselves. In this instance, each hyperboloid In this way, the “hyperboloids of revolution” will effectively turns up to a reasonable height according to structural and participate in turning Detroit around. programmatic criteria, and at that point is attached to an ad- jacent downward turning hyperboloid. The geometric and architectural systems are at once autonomous and codependent. The ramp landings coincide with significant points in the rise and fall of the roof surface: while the northern side of the hyperboloidal roof ascends just enough to surmount the existing plinth of the postal facil- ity, the southern side tilts down and thus permits the ramps to pass through and over the roof in order to reach the water. Columns conform at once to the parking layout and to the straight lines that generate the hyperboloids. The 10-story

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PSC_Log37.indd 4-5 4/7/16 7:42 PM PSC_Log37.indd 6-7 4/7/16 7:42 PM Narrative diagrams showing geomet­ rical transformations of roof plane, ramps, and staircases. Top: Perspective rendering, interior view. Opposite page: Lower-level parking plan.

PSC_Log37.indd 8-9 4/7/16 7:42 PM Model. Opposite page: Upper-floor program plan. Next spread: Rendered aerial view.

PSC_Log37.indd 10-11 4/7/16 7:42 PM PSC_Log37.indd 12-13 4/7/16 7:42 PM